Research and Development / Major Project, - The broken Gnome...

Further reading of affect, trauma, and contemporary art led me to start to read the book "empathic vision" by Jill Bennett (2005) Standford University press, California.

Within this book I have found a number of very strong reference points in which the subject of trauma in imagistic representation through art, and how such art can create an affect through such signifying images.
One of the quotes she makes which was written in 1911 by Eduard Claparede, the Swiss psychologist, in his questions regarding "la Question de la memoire affective",

"it is impossible to feel emotion as past… One cannot be a spectator of one's own feelings; one feels them, or one does not feel them; one cannot imagine them without stripping them of their affective essence."  1911 by Eduard Claparede.

Whilst the state of and emotion can be remembered the actual feeling within one's body as a result of an image or an object creating an affect, cannot be brought back through a conscious desire to remember on its own.

In trying to apply these notions to my two-dimensional works that in fact are really three-dimensional, in a way I am also tipping my hat to the 1950s 60s and 70s art commentator Clement Greenberg, and his statements regarding two-dimensional nullity of all painting.

My fragments of gnomes have therefore been placed onto canvas in the form of prototype and within these images I will try and create something akin to both fragmentation breakage, memory, loss etc etc and try and test what affect these might have in a future art critique.

Conclusion(s):-

• There is still much to do and whilst these initial prototypes are quite aesthetically pleasing, I'm not sure if they are really having a realistic affect on a viewer.
• Perhaps I will also try to test these new canvases on a different set of audiences?
• I need to work towards a new aesthetic using the concept of the gnome throughout the rest of this week. 
• I need to explore as many ways of representation that I can in order to get my idea sufficiently communicated through a state of affect.

Major Project, - building ideas, standing on the shoulders of giants....

Last week I created some simple paintings which were based on watercolours, and and painted very quickly as representational ideas of the gnome.

The progression of the idea for the disappearing object, as in "Things Left behind", has led me to experiment a little more with the notion of Heidegger and broken tool.

I have also been exploring the idea of mimesis, and the paper entitled "mimesis as a mode of knowing". This academic paper explores how vision and movement in aesthetic practice of Jean Painleve, which was written by Anna Gibbs, of the writing and Society research centre and digital humanities research group, within the School of humanities and communication arts, University of Western Sydney, Australia 2012.

In Gibbs is paper she likens the idea of mimesis, which she terms as corporeal copying and communication involving the sharing of movement and form in which affect ways a significant role. In essence what Gibbs says in her paper is that there are a number of different ways of conceiving affect, which she has written about outside of this paper, which I need to try to find and study. Gibbs argues that effectivity is a major component of the characteristic responsiveness of all animal wife, whether human or nonhuman. She gives examples such as smiling, and how both in humans and I believe in chimpanzees and possibly other apes and primates this visual cue is in itself an affect which can be copied by others nearby as a mimetic response. Other human behaviour can also create this copying of an affect which she calls "mimetic contagion".

My choice of the visual image of good gnome I believe also creates a mimetic contagion in many in order to respond with a smile. My idea of the gnome object and its facial translation into a disappearing memory, or notion of an object that is left behind disappearing as a memory, is an animated trigger which has the desired effect that I'm looking for.

I have therefore created further plaster of Paris moulds of the original gnome, but this time, once they are set I intend to fragment them, in a similar way to the broken statue of the original figure. This breaking up of the gnome is an allusion both symbolically and metaphorically to Heidegger's theory, and the notion of being which he later wrote about in his paper "Art and Space" (1969). Whilst Heidegger talks of art and space his original works have been built upon with further emphasis on the importance of temporality. Art space and temporality is intrinsically linked with my investigations of objects and memory.

I am intending to create some two-dimensional relief images, which are in fact on closer scrutiny, three-dimensional. When the plaster of Paris mouldings are dry, I will set to work on a series which combine the blue of memory with the fragmented objects memory together.

Conclusions:-
I'm still convinced that I must pursue the notion that Heidegger and his writings have planted, both in terms of art space and time (temporality) discussed above, with the concept of his theory of "being" and Heidegger's broken hammer.

I must create works which trigger appropriate emotional responses through affect, but must not be entirely obvious to the viewer. There is something still quite out of place in the images of gnomes that I want to continue to explore and will do so for the remainder of this term I suspect.

R&D / Major Project. Round-up from the week

As a kind of summary or conclusion to the previous week, I wanted to start off with a note about the symposium was held last Thursday regarding "thought positions in sculpture and the archive".

This was an excellent conference with a very valuable group of speakers, which helped to search out an understanding of how three-dimensional artefacts (not just sculpture), can be thought about in the new millennium. It also touched upon the archive and contemporary art practice. I recall a lecture by Caroline Christoph Bakargiev back in 2014 at the University, and I understood her position following the duration of documenta 13, which was the opposition to the idea of archive. I was really pleased to see that this has become a feed into the work of Dr Alison Rowley, who is now the director for the Centre for sculptural thinking (CST), established in June 2014 and draws the University of Huddersfield art design and architecture school into a memorandum of understanding in collaboration with the Henry Moore Institute and the Hepworth galleries. This has been described as "a rigourous and vibrant research environment".

In a few weeks time, I will be taking part in a bookbinding workshop on Thursday the 25th and Friday, 26 November at the gallery in Huddersfield. On very much looking forward to this.

Whilst I have not been able to attend the "thought bubble" festival in Leeds this year, which is actually a comic art practice festival, I have made a note in my diary for attendance and subsequent years perhaps as there may be some useful ideas to gain from it. As this festival seems to include comic art as its principal subject I wasn't sure if it would be appropriate for my practice at this stage. However from some of the feedback received from other students who have attended, it appears to be a much wider scope than just comic art, as it also includes painting and illustration as a much more open set of genres.

The British Art show is fully underway in Leeds art gallery now, and I am keen to attend the show, particularly over the Christmas holidays as it remains open until 10 January 2016.

There was much discussion this week also about the up-and-coming degree show next year, which will present the full range of works that my year of students, the graduate year, will exhibit.
It was pointed out that the studios have a particular set of "contingencies" with regards to the fact that there is no natural light entering them, so arguably depending on what I need, I need to think about lighting and positioning of my artworks in plenty of time so that this can be arranged through a curatorial team.

Major Project - Thought Positions in Sculpture, Part 2

Following the lecture by Esther Reeve, of Sheffield Hallam University, the next lecture in this series was presented by Dr Juliet McDonald of the University of Huddersfield, which was entitled "Displaying the Head of Victory".

Dr MacDonald outlined her research which is based on the original Leeds city War Memorial. Originally this statue was situated in the Victoria Gardens in Leeds, and was designed by the architect Henry Charles Fehr (1893 to 1961), and was unveiled in 1922. The original statue was probably a sculpture modelled on Nike the God of victory, but also included additional statues on the sides, which were figures that represented Peace and also a 'British' sculpture of St George slaying the dragon.

The history of the figure of victory and where it was subsequently positioned, provided a very interesting and chequered timeline. The relocations of the statue and the monument could be mapped to the Post world War one political and global changes over the next 100 years up to our present time. Eventually, the whole monument and statue, (not including the stone/concrete base that remains at the Headrow in Leeds), was abandoned and dumped. This led Dr MacDonald to highlight one of the inscriptions which was "Invictus Pax", which in Latin means "unvanquished in peace"

The statue represented in Dr MacDonald's mind, an object for "visceral bereavement", and she explained that grief requires an object to focus upon in order to be an affected point of attention.

The final installation presented by Dr Juliet McDonald is indeed the figurehead of the statue of victory within the gallery, and has been entitled "victory in the desert those quotes. This was chosen as a titled because during the 1922 period when the original memorial was unveiled, the British and French governments were engaged deeply in drawing lines and boundaries in Palestine, which included the deserts of Syria and Iraq. In contemporary sense, almost 100 years later, the conflict in those countries of Syria and Iraq continued to dominate much of the political attention of the British and French governments to this day.

The next lecture was provided by Dr Jill Townsley, University of Huddersfield, entitled "Stones"-an archive.

This extensive piece of work resonates with some of the things that Hester Reeves had discussed earlier within this symposium.

"Stones" was created in response to Bernd and Hiller Beckner's works upon conceptualism in a modern construct. For example "Tanks" (1973).

This works was about "change" within the product found in functional utilitarian buildings and industrial architecture of the every day during the 1950s 60s and 70s. It tackled the question of "the portraiture of our industrial fabric" in relation to nature, and natural, together with repetition.

In either cutters works he says "differences are superficial" and talks in terms of singularity, community, difference, archive and place. In Roremer's book (2001) regarding Bernd and Hiller Beckner's work, he says "measurement is a human construct".

In Dr Townsley's presentation of her works, she outlined that the stones were removed from a particular stream located on the Marsden estate, and the stones became an archival construct, as Dr Townsley collected a metricated 100 set of stones. By using "measurement" in various ways as each of the stones are displayed, we now have a relationship with each of them. Dr Townsley labelled this as archive 1.

The nature of the stones then changed by Dr Townsley polishing them, but instead of using their own form of polish, for example by waxing them, or some other transparent polishing technique, Dr Townsley actually used some 25 different types of nail polish, in order to redefine their content. Dr Townsley labelled this as archive 2.

In archive 3, the polished stones are placed into a clear Perspex tank. The stones are then suspended a few centimetres above the floor. In this, their new state, they can no longer be placed in the riverbed. This is an illusion to the stones being severed from their homeland.

In order to illustrate the concept of the above works, Dr Townsley selected a musical passage from the late Ivor Cutler (recorded in 1983) entitled "people run to the edge".

The narrative of lived experience sculpts our own output of thought. "Life writing" and the diegesic model, is modelling from life.

Both philosophers Faucault and Derrida, described that the word "capture" is an interesting term in the way that things are "owned". By displaying items in archives, it could be argued that certain objects are being liberated but again, this is not liberating certain other objects.

The final symposium lecture was provided by Dr Jeanette Martin, an archivist with the Royal College of art working at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.

The lecture was provided on archives and the creative practice and provided three case studies, a) Jackie Irving, b) Neal White, and c) Anton Lessiman. All of whom won scholarships at the Henry Moore Institute.

The question was asked what is an archive?
In definition, this is unique material created by an individual or an organisation in the pursuit of day-to-day life; a collection of historical documents or records that are no longer in daily use.

Example the artist, Jackie Irving provided "forgotten works" 2004. This traces the work of the artist Betty Rae, (1904 to 1965), who was a sculpture who taught at the Royal College of arts and was indeed a pupil of Sir Henry Moore himself.

Irvin produced a series "for all the lives we will never live" (2004) and also a further piece entitled "exhibition of 1957 revisited" (2005), which was taken as a series of nine reimagined photographs which were flipped and turned around to reimagine the original space.

The artist Jacob Eckstein, who provided sculpture for the BMA building (1908), was particularly of interest as the subsequent battles that Eckstein had there, as a result of placing the sculptural scheme on the outside of the BMA building, which caused a massive controversy at the time because of the statues potentially offensive to some nature, and then gain some 20+ years later afterwards a new property owner of the British Medical Association battled again to get rid of them. The whole records collection of these battles does make a great archive.

The next archive that was discussed was that of "Anton Lessiman" (1899 to 1971), which was a biography of this artist. These biography archives were presented by the Henry Moore Institute fellow, Paul Becker. It was only after the archive was exhibited that Paul Becker announced that it was a complete invention by him. Anton lessons fictitious archive was away to examine excepted histories in an original way. It reconfigures our ideas of validation. Only those individuals who are successful are remembered, the other lesser-known creatives are soon forgotten. Here it is suggested that this fictitious artists "Anton Lessiman" is one of those forgotten heroes. Becker stated at the time "sometimes famous people's work sucks up the creativity of others, like a black hole".

Conclusions:-
the archive as a thought position can be considered as a triangulation between sculpture contemporary practice and the past.

Major Project - Thought Positions in Sculpture

I was lucky enough to be able to attend seminar today which had been curated by Dr Rowan Bailey. The symposium was designed to bring together different responses to the recent exhibition at Huddersfield Art Gallery entitled "thought positions in sculpture", which displays the work of 10 contemporary artists who have encountered the archive and relate it to their own art practice.

The original planning for this exhibition and symposium commenced in April 2014 at the Royal College of Art engagement entitled "archival interventions in sculpture". Dr Rowan explained the context of both the exhibition and this symposium, which explores

• What, as resources, can "the archive" offer?
• What histories in thinking and making can be explored?
• What are the various practitioners approaches to the archives?

All of these questions will provide a springboard for future thinking. Dr Rowan explained a triangulation informing responses as "an archive as a site of history", "practice led", "thought positions". These three areas provide the points of triangulation informing responses.

The work explores the new web-based archives of
1) National life stories website,-interviews with people in public life.
2) the Tate archives project,-an online collection of sketchbooks and interviews of various leading artists of the 20th century and the start of this millennium.
3) archives of the Henry Moore Institute based at Leeds Art Gallery, The Headrow, Leeds.

A major question to ask ourselves is "what might constitute a thought position in art practice?"
The answer to this is varied but includes our ability to read, to read a piece of art, to take time to understand, to linger, to absorb the wall wider and whole picture, to observe the Gesthalt.

In the words of the philosopher John Dewey "thinking is an art".

Whenever we think about arriving at a position in art, things don't always appear as they seem. Our neural pathways (our 'schemas' as I called it in a previous blog, or blueprints to our automatic cognitive way of thinking), influence our results. The need for us to individually pay attention to the collection of thoughts has been extensively written about by philosophers such as Heidegger and later the works of Jaques Derrida.

A lecture was then presented by Sheila Gaffney, Head of Art at the Leeds College of Art. This was entitled reflections on "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", and opened with the sound recording of the musical composition by Ennio Morreconi, which at the time of release in the 1960s, was in fact released before the film. It presented a brand-new way of creating a cinematic moment which was based on a number of sounds of 'quotidian objects' (i.e. everyday sounds from common things), and raw recorded passages that brought vivid images of the fictional environment.

In thinking about this piece of music, the philosopher Christopher Bollas provides an explanation of "the un-thought note".  He provides a description through psychoanalysis of the 'thought known'. In his book "The Shadow of the Object" he provides a psychic framework for embedded dreaming.

Dr Gaffney discussed the U.K.'s sculptural pedagogy which is built upon a position of "mothering"  to 'pre-form' a psychic frame of reference for making sculpture. She discussed the decorative, didactic, bombastic, mythological approach to the production of sculpture, based on the theatre of lived experience. She believes that much British pedagogy is inherited from the existing archive.

Consider a six-year-old observer of a piece of sculpture. Consider how they can provide an un-biased view of what a sculpture can mean. The signposting, created through a lifetime of lived experience completely changes our own output and feeling of any piece.

The next lecture was provided by Esther Reeve, of Sheffield Hallam University, entitled sculptural substance.

The lecture is based on a part poetic, part academic paper which will be published in the forthcoming weeks and is based on the exhibition "burning to speak" at the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield.

In "sculptural substance" Esther is trying to relate to the expression of a creative force, not a material substance. The human "creature" (the word itself signifies creative), and our capacity to be carved by our philosophical and ethical beliefs is what is being explored here.
The notion of a substance, beginning with the Aristotelian definition, suggests that the duality of substance and matter to create form is subjective, in that in substance, we do not have control of it.

The social and public interface of art practice and the associated careers, is purely human paradigms.

"There was a tradition" is a piece of art that Esther Reeve takes inspiration from, - the story of Plato (which includes drawers and salt cellars) found in the book Hector. The artist uses sentences from that book which also references the Temple of the Rohner (which was secondary in importance only to the Oracle at Delphi) for example the sentence "Oak speaks truth" and "the speaker is and from what country the tale comes".

We take for granted that we are all living our own unique lives.... "the artist lives-long live the artist!". What this means is that what we set up in life actually has a bearing on our future life.

An example the artist uses again is one taken from Grey's Anatomy, - "a drawing of a larynx" and the possible metaphor of the genera, which is greater of the voice itself, which can be thought of as the 'grain' of voice. This takes its reference from "Now Garbo" and the book "sculpture carving and constructing in space" (1937, page 109). Within it, the author writes "shapes act, shapes influence our psyche, shapes our events and beings. Our perception of shapes is tied up with our perception of existence itself".

Life Drawing, (R&D) - Continuous Learning

Approximately 3 hours each Tuesday are spent in life drawing classes, run by Prof Swindell. Whilst I have not previously blogged about life drawing during the start of this term, I have so far attended every session to date. I'm amazed to see that other students sometimes do not see the value of life drawing, as the numbers of participants has slowly dwindled from a full class of 12 people, down to just three of us yesterday.

Nevertheless, whilst I may be old-fashioned in my approach to learning what I believe to be crucial as a skill in contemporary art, it seems that there is a genuine benefit to me personally in my drawing development. It was very useful to explore a variation on drawing yesterday, by using alternative media to pencil, graphite or charcoal which have been the traditional mainstay of life drawing.

By using alternative media, in yesterday's case we used very dilute acrylic paint together with drawing ink applied on a horizontal surface of 150 g/m² Fabriano paper. Our drawing boards were placed on the floor, so therefore we had to sit and look up at the model which totally changed our sense of perspective of the body and of for- shortening.

Because we were applying ink with a fairly thick quarter inch hogs hair brush, there was plenty of run-off. Whilst the paper did not bleed the ink as it dried, we were able to use dilute white acrylic paint with a similar sized brush, to create a completely different style of painting. The results of which I was particularly pleased with.

As my blog is a public site I am conscious of the need for some reserve when displaying the output of life drawing classes. Therefore I apologise if the image shown in this blog may offend anyone, however I have chosen a suitably abstract painting of mine in order to demonstrate an example of style I was exploring yesterday.

Research & Development - "The Blue of Distance"

For the last couple of months or so, I have been reading a book by Rebecca Solnit "a Field guide to getting lost" (2005) published by Viking Penguin/Canongate books Ltd. Which was recommended to me by Christian Lloyd. I have found that this is not just a Field guide, but more like a true companion! The way that Solnit writes resonates with the way that I often think. I have already quoted within this blog the concept of Shul, the Tibetan expression which generally means the impression that is left behind, which seems to have multiple meanings through that inference.

However I found it particularly resonant when I learned that Solnit also lived in Lima, the capital of Peru, South America when she was two years old, which must mean that she was there at the same time me and my family were living in that country too... The memories that I have of that place, are now so faded that I find it extremely difficult to picture or imagine the six years of my life which on the face of it must have held very many different events. Nevertheless, I recently found an old Bolivian ladies hat which belonged to my late brother, whilst I was clearing a wardrobe in his house. The object itself instantly brought a whole change in my feelings, so much so that I actually sat down and stared at the object for quite some minutes. It is after all just a hat. But the uniqueness of its shape, the felt outer covering, the brightly coloured woven patterns that had been lovingly positioned onto it, perhaps some 50 years ago, still brought vitality and re-imagining of a very comfortable and safe sense of warmth to me. Whilst I cannot remember much if any of the events leading to us acquiring this hat as a family, the sight of it alone, produced a very intimate affect.

Looking at the Media and Communications (M/C) Journal publication and the paper entitled "feeling, emotion, affect" by Eric shoes (December 2005) in M/C Journal, 8.6 (2005), he writes an interesting article which explains that although feeling and effect are often interchanged, but goes on to say how important it is not to confuse affect with feeling and emotions. He quotes brine assume these definition, which is based on Giles the loose and Felix got our is book 1000 plateaus, and states that affect is not a personal feeling. He says feelings are personal and biographical, whereas emotions are social, and affects our pre-personal. Whilst at first sight this may seem to be rather picky, the study of affect will soon explode any myth that this subject is a simple one.

I'm pleased to see that my own interpretation of emotion has been described as "the projection or display of the feeling". I have already written that my interpretation of emotion is quite easy to grasp because I have used the simple device of splitting the word E-motion to mean, Expressive Motion. These expressive motions, usually displayed facially, but can also include bodily, such as shaking, are a form of communication.

However affect, is "non-conscious experience of intensity; it is a moment of uninformed and unstructured potential". What that means to me is that an affect is triggered through external encounters which arguably, we have no control of. Our emotions are therefore set up by the affect, and depending on our own temperament we are able to consciously vary the degree and intensity of our expressive motions, our emotions.

And finally a feeling is our own internal sensation which is usually measured against our own life experiences or biography. Therefore our feelings are unique because individually our own life events, and the exposure to various situations, whether they be trauma grief, rage, anger etc provoking, will collectively add up within our own schema or blueprint of cognition, and so our response, measured or otherwise, will manifest itself as a feeling.

So I was particularly interested today, to hear about the sister of one of our senior tutors, and a short discussion I had in a corridor, where I learned that this person had a total phobia for garden gnomes. The very thought of the image of a garden gnome brings about a deep-seated feeling within this affected individual. As phobias are invariably generated as a result of childhood trauma related experiences, the scheme for this person in adulthood has been set in such a way that the neural pathways automatically and subconsciously trigger emotional responses to communicate distress. I found this fascinating and whilst I have true compassion and sympathy for the individual, or indeed anyone with phobias, it is clear to me that affect and phobia must be explored through my art in a much deeper psychological as well as physical and philosophical sense.

This short conversation perhaps lasting less than 15 seconds, provided a massive buzz of both recognition and satisfaction within me, and encouraged me significantly to continue on my quest for the gnomic image of "things left behind".

Major Project - Feedback on formative assessment

(Discussion)
The planning phase has been initiated with very good use of the mind map, the swot analysis tool, the planning pro forma, a brainstorming sheet, and the development of a bucket list, which is ongoing. These tools were discussed as being very familiar to me, having used them prior to this University study. Whilst they form part of the research and development module, clearly this is linked directly to the major project as well, so their use has been an excellent way for to start using familiar tools. My output from these aids was a written proposal of my own format (attached) together with the University’s recommended planning sheet. I have also created a project Gantt chart with simple tasks, hierarchies and milestones to achieve on certain dates. I'm working well within this structure.

With regard to my practice, my exploration is based on “things left behind”, and how I can use these as a metaphor to express grief loss and affect. This problem / argument has been chosen to mean that I am looking at objects that are not necessarily “found objects”, (as there is a very wide genre and interest in contemporary art within found objects), but instead looks at the notion of the involuntary loss of something that may have been left behind. This is not about discarded objects, because this involves a wilful act of jettison. So I'm looking for something new as a genre to both complement and challenge the popular genre of found objects and recycling.

I have made excellent use of my mind map as a source of recorded thinking, to provide direction to my practice. I also continue to update my mind map as a "living document" which allows me to take detours of direction during my research journey and explore related and / or new areas of interest as they emerge.

Having chosen also to examine a life event, and then related it to my project of "things left behind", I can see a correlation between the loss of an object as a form of grief. The object that is lost is merely a metaphor or vehicle for me to express this idea. It could be the loss of a simple umbrella that has sentimental value, a laptop or mobile phone or wallet, or even a kettle (as per discussion with Christian Lloyd). It is these feelings, - indeed the ‘affect’ that I'm exploring through visual images. In my own case I have linked this metaphor of an object, to my brother’s death in 2014, the object that I lost around the same time was in fact a garden gnome. The reason for the choice of object is that whilst it's quite meaningless in theory and perhaps has only a monetary value of a couple of pounds, the sentimental value of it was quite high.

Through multiple representations of series of garden gnomes in two-dimensions, I'm trying to capture and express the idea of a lost third dimension. Having used various mediums including acrylic on paper, Plaster of Paris suspended in acrylic paint on paper, and latterly watercolour painting with a transparent wash, I am now exploring how I can create a new process of using fragments of a remoulded garden gnome, made from Plaster of Paris, within a two-dimensional painting to induce within the image, a sense of disappearance and fading, just like our memories of objects beginning to disappear and fade away. This is a very slight move away from the two-dimensional into the three-dimensional, but my representation of an imagistic idea will still retain an aspect of a lost dimension, back to two (i.e. a virtually flat surface plane).

I'm also interested in how I can explain my idea from the micro to the macro level, with some humorous twist. I'm exploring this through the traces that we as human beings leave behind, such as fingerprints, footprints, our virtual Internet footprint, and even write down to our own unique signature as DNA. (As per the Genome Project...)

(Tutor Feedback)
My feedback from my tutor was that my research here in my practice, is really very thorough and he also mentioned that this is reflected very well within my blog updates which he found interesting, because it was the combination of my writing and my studio practice work, which together provides very good research. He understood that my work is not just about making the image or making a sculpture, but it is this whole process of research which is an output. His view is that I could well have found an ideal way of how I could be practising as an established artist. This links both with the ideas that I'm having and the contextual and broad contextualisation of that with contemporary thinkers and practitioners, together with how I position myself, amongst all of them. It will be interesting how it will work on the realm of presentation, and how things have been discovered through research, rather than just objects, that I can develop over the next few months.

Overall I was very pleased with the formative assessment and my tutor gave excellent encouragement for me to continue on my journey of research.

Theory - Critical Thinking skills - Reflections

In Stella Cottrell's book, Critical Thinking Skills, (2011), (MacMillan Publishers Limited), I have found an excellent source of information and tuition which can be followed together with examples and self evaluation forms within the book which can be filled in to help develop my critical thinking abilities.

Some of the areas that I have found particularly useful to think about, is that often we are so eager to express our own opinion about a particular matter that we do not listen to other people's points of view or positions on topics. As a result an argument rather than a debate (in their normal everyday senses of these words) and skews. It's vital that I learned to listen more to a point of view and try hard to understand someone else's position in order for me to weigh up and evaluate any evidence that they may have presented. By listening carefully to other people's presentations and positions, it puts you as a listener in a much better position if you have an open mind, which will allow you to start to "read between the lines" of their own argument. It also allows you to start to understand particular techniques that people may use in their attempt to persuade you that their point of view is the correct one; rhetorical persuasion and false logic can manipulate a listener to agree on something even though the listener may have a completely different initial view or indeed no view at all.

It is often difficult to listen to other people's points of view without getting wrapped up with your own emotions, which may be based on individual idiosyncrasies or life events that may have influenced you at the time in the biased way. It is quite common for opinions to be made almost automatically in the heat of an emotional event. Whether we have arrived at the situation through frustration, distress or sadness, or anxiety or even rage and anger, we need to check those emotions at some stage, even if it is days weeks months or years after a particular event in order for our logical response and rational thought to be given the chance to formulate an unbiased position.


Conclusions:
In critical thinking situations this self management of our emotional reactions is vital, so that we can form rational and well thought out responses to any points or arguments that are put forward to us. This is true during our everyday transactions with other people, as well as in our attempts to write essays and dissertations for academic review.

By listening properly to all the points of view that you can gain and then by reflecting on each of those positions in a logical and structured approach will allow you to judge whether an argument is valid and justified, or if it is fabricated and whimsical perhaps. Finally by using the Aristotle approach of hypothesis antithesis and synthesis, you are able to synthesise your own opinion and develop your own point of view with careful judgement of the facts that you have been able to obtain, in order for you to formulate your own individual statement or argument.

By going through the right approach and process of critical thinking it puts you into a position where you can present an argument that is clear to the listener is very well structured and logical and is truly persuasive based on well formulated facts that will leave the listener in no doubt that you understand your own position fully, and ultimately will change their own beliefs as a result of the new information that you have imparted to them.

Research and Development, Artist Review of Egon Schiele (1890-1918)

Egon Schiele (1890-1918).

The tragic life events of Egon Schiele seem to be a particularly interesting series of tumultuous and traumatic "sculptural" blows to a highly gifted and skilled artist who at the dawn of the 20th century, died at the tender age of 28, and yet perhaps set in motion some of the most important styles of influence to contemporary art through the next century and into this millennium.

His early childhood was initially rocked by the death of his father, a station master in the Austrian town of Tulln, where he lived with his three siblings. Schiele lost his father in early adolescence at age 15, and it appears that this significant bereavement caused him to reflect on his own grief for the remainder of his life, which lasted less than 13 years after the extremely difficult time, when the young Egon had to witness the steady deterioration of his father, due to a worsening of mental stability and insanity (after he contracted syphilis, prior to marrying Egon's mother).

The resultant output of art from Schiele, whilst clearly influenced by his mentor Gustaf Klimt, seems to hold particularly disturbed and some may argue rather twisted movements of brushstrokes or pencil, in almost all of the subjects that Schiele chose for his objects of representation, the most famous of which are Schiele's figurative works.

Whilst he is mainly celebrated for his unique style of capturing an image in a radical gesture of the nude, his other works also reflect, what I believe to be a deep sadness within the mind of young Egon. It seems that he was tortured mentally in many ways;  in his relationship with his mother, with relationships later with his models and possibly lovers, and finally with his wife, Edith Halms, whom he married in June 1915.  After only four days of marriage, Egon Schiele was requested to sign up for Army service.

• Egon Schiele,Death and Maiden, 1913-1916.

  
  

  Oil on canvas. 130 x 180 cm. Belvedere, Vienna. 

Image; - Courtesy of the Royal Academy
(* PLEASE DO NOT COPY * - for personal research purposes only).

He had already built up a strong and successful reputation as a flourishing young artist, at the age of 25, and spent the next few years transferring Russian prisoners of war to and from Vienna. He was therefore able to continue to some degree as an artist, and was later posted back to Vienna in what seems quite a comfortable position for a military serviceman.  Indeed so much so that he was actively encouraged by the military leaders of the time, as he was recognised as perhaps one of the most promising young artists throughout the whole of Austria and Europe during the second half of the First World War. As a result he was given permission and asked to take part in a number of exhibitions to politically assist with the relationship being built between Germany Austria and the Scandinavian countries.







References;
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/egon-schiele-the-body-electric
http://courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/what-on/exhibitions-displays/archive/schiele-the-radical-nude
http://egonschiele.co.uk/
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/S/schiele.html
http://www.egon-schiele.eu/en/das-museum

All retrieved between 05-07 November 2015.

Major Project / Research through practice

My next area of interest beyond the two-dimensional paintings using Plaster of Paris as a substrate suspended within the acrylic paint itself produced some interesting results last week.

Whilst doodling and creating a water-based image of fading gnomes slowly disappearing through a hazy blue mist of memories I was able to lose myself and thought and come up with a further idea of expression which I will outline below.

I'm keen to explore further how I can represent my idea of "things left behind" and continue to use a simple object as a garden gnome as a metaphor. I have therefore embarked upon making a series of copies of garden gnomes as taken from the original smashed item, which I rebuilt during my summer holidays into an object that was "as good if not better than new".  At the beginning of the week I started this little investigation.

My garden gnome has therefore been covered in a layer of latex. I will repeat an application of latex to provide sufficient layers in order to create a mould. This flexible mould will need additional support and my method of providing the support will be through a casting method known as using "a mother mould".

(One day later...)  This mother mould will be made from Plaster of Paris.

(Two days later....)

The moulding process will require a number of steps where each casting will be required to dry. As the cast will need to be removed from the latex in the mould, a series of locator lugs will need to be incorporated into the first base mould.

Once the base mould was dry, I coated the surface with a mixture of paraffin jelly to stop the next player from sticking to it. I also divided the latex mould from the future fourth quadrant by using a plasticine barrier which was laid laterally on the surface of my garden gnome. Wonderful casting process was complete I was then able again to use a layer of paraffin jelly between the third quadrant and the final quadrant of the mould.

Day 5...
I have then left the combination mould to dry for the remainder of the week / weekend.....

 Conclusions;
Early stages yet, but I think that this might be a good exercise.  It is quite time consuming, but I have been able to do other things, including my formative assessment preparation this week.
 I have learned some very useful techniques this week about double moulding and casting, although I do have some previous experience of making lead / metal casting using clay moulds in the past.  The use of a flexible latex inner mould and mother mould is new to me, and I'm looking forward to seeing early results!

Theory - Critical analysis - Short lecture / group seminar.

Dr Beth Coldwell provided a short lecture regarding critical thinking, and opened the discussion with the old cliche "if it's too good to be true, it usually is!"

The point of this quotation is to underline the importance that whenever a claim is made, - if we as students are to depend on this, we must search for its validity in academic literature, but we must be aware that even in published papers there are claims that may only be partially true. The key is to find proper supporting validity in order for our opinions to be made when writing our essay. An example was to consider the claim made by the National express newspaper in 2009 which claimed that by drinking 7 cups of coffee each day, or more, would lead us into having hallucinations. This piece of newspaper reporting was based on a very narrow piece of research, with a very dubious range of participants based on demographic of university students. It did not represent wider population. Many people drink more than 7 cups of coffee every day and have no ill effects, and yet a national newspaper was able to publish this?

Critical thinking and reading is not about being negative. It is about considering all the points of an argument academically. In our reading, we are likely to find authors with different views about the subject which is to investigate. It is our job as an essay writer to consider as many if not all the views in order to come up with our own opinions. It is therefore necessary to find the correct references, and then to follow them up and checked them in detail.

• An essay requires an academic argument.
• The argument is a journey which is taken in order to explore and find consensus.
• The argument moves beyond the discussion and also beyond simply describing whatever the topic of interest might be. If an essay becomes a discussion or description about the topic only, it has little weight.
• An essay needs to have enquiry and critical thought together with proper reasoning and challenging of existing knowledge in order to create new knowledge to any existing body of research. This is what makes a good essay both interesting and successful.

R&D - Seminar - Research Methods, - Research Through Practice

In this the second seminar by Christian Lloyd and Alison Rowley, the group investigated and openly discussed ideas as to "what constitutes as research".

In contemporary art there is much discussion in the research method known as "research through practice", an item which I wrote about on this blog last year, which were based on ideas from John Dewey, James Elkins, and many other scholarly commentators in both philosophy and art. I will not therefore go into much detail about that within this blog, other than the fact that it is now established within me, that the idea of just continuing to make, leads to new ideas in themselves.

An essential part of research is to understand "what comes first"? The idea leads to questions and observations....

It was suggested by Dr Rowley that during a recent trip to London, she found herself on Baker Street quite near to the London tube lost property office. She happened to be passing this particular building which had a very ornately decorated shop window, which contained a magnificent display of various items of things left behind on the London Tube, which ranged from the ubiquitous umbrella all the way through to more obscure personal items of unique ownership, such as prosthetic limbs, glass eyes and other peculiar objects. I was glad to hear Dr Rowley also mention the affect of lost objects and the lecture by Caroline Christov Bakargiev in 2014.

I also introduced the concept of "the parking lot" to the group. This was an idea that I had explained to one of the students a few with weeks ago, who was rather stressed about finding new ideas and having too much in his head and so I recommended that whilst he recorded these ideas somehow he should also take them out of his head and leave them somewhere in order to go back to them to take another look at some future time.

There seemed to be an interesting and direct resonance with Dr Rowley in my investigation and research on how grief provides an "affect" and my choice to research "things left behind" and lost objects.

Through research through practice the synthesis and output is to be able to communicate the content of the research through the images and objects that I intend to make but it is vitally important that I maintain a clear goal to express what else I am also bringing to the existing body of work, as new and innovative material.

So what is being innovative? Well, it means that I need to be taking this idea and combining it with ideas from elsewhere in order to culturally add to the whole. As mentioned in my blog that I wrote before this seminar, by being aware of the wider picture it is crucial to also focus upon the detail.

Towards the end of the discussion, it was suggested that by looking at other examples of art from a completely different direction can help to formulate your own ideas.

The "ethics form" provided by the University may help to look at my project/from a completely different angle. This ethics form can certainly help to ask questions that I may not have considered previously.

A further idea was to look at materiality in itself.   A good example given to me to look at something in a completely different angle might be the work of Rebecca Homms (???)  and her "Knitted Items" of art, for example the pink tank cover.

[I later found this artist to actually be Marianne Joergensen...]

retrieved from;
http://www.machine-raum.dk/kunstnere_grafik/Marianne_Joergensen_eng.html

(Courtesy of Machine-Raum, Denmark, 2015 (Image for personal research only, - please do not copy).

• What is it that we need to know about where our own ideas sit within the wider world and in relation to what is going on in the contemporary environment and culture?
• What are we looking at as individuals which is of interest to us as an idea?
• Who is currently researching or dealing with this idea in other areas of art or indeed in the world?
• And finally how do research, and how do they search for resolutions to those ideas?

In reflection of this seminar I feel quite comfortable that I have chosen a suitable problem statement in order to create a body of work, a body of research which I can apply to my artistic practice, and a long term investigation which in theory, could last for many years...

Conclusions 
in focusing upon materiality viz.

•  how and what I make my art out of must have both cultural and exploitative significance.
• How can I explain loss and grief through materiality?
• The material itself has properties. Any "accidental" finds during my research through making is obviously quite key to my ability to express my notions and ideas.
• What do I need to know from my own research?
• The question I also need to keep asking myself is "how do other practitioners research this similar idea"?

And finally my Research and Development blog must continue to document my journey which I should include with 'the bits left behind' in "The Car Park". I must continue to summarise and contextualise my ideas but also to show my mistakes, together with research that can also be drawn from information obtained through daily living.

Major Project, - From the micro to the macro.

One of the concious thoughts imparted to me some time ago by an old manager of mine (back in the late 1990s), was always that "The devil is always in the detail".   I've always been quite a detail person, so this was very much part of my way of working.   But the in the mid "naughties" (2005-6), I struggled with a boss who always said "I [they] don't do, I manage"... and at other times I also heard them say "I don't do detail," - which I always took to mean as some poor excuse for not knowing what to do, so it was down to me to sort things out!...

So the upshot of the life lesson that I learned, was that to be really good, one has to be able to do both the detail, and the management of the wider project (or picture) and at the same time, be fully aware of how it sits in its own context with what ever else was going on at the time (i.e. to place it in its own level of priority and or importance etc).

I was delighted again therefore whilst reading Will Gompertz book "Think like an Artist" (2015), to find the passage and a full paragraph dedicated to "artists think big picture and fine detail" (pages 116 through to 137).

For quite some time of the last week something at the back of my mind that has been niggling away at me is the thought of this notion of the very very small to the very very large. From the Micro to the Macro if you like.

Now bear with me on this one, because whilst this thought has been spinning around in my head for some time, I was able to place it in what I kind of call the "Parking Lot". (The ability of latent thinking, to put something in the back of your mind without entirely forgetting it I believe is extremely powerful and it has proved itself again here. Let me get to the point).

In my search for something left behind at the micro level, something very very small, I have already had thoughts around how I can introduce fingerprints as an item that we leave as a trace, through our journey in this world. On a less tangible but virtual Internet level, I have also been thinking about the Internet and the information superhighway and our journey through that. Our data footprint is again something that all of us leave behind, particularly in the Western world, even if we haven't actually had the opportunity to participate in the information age directly; whoever we are in the West, part of our lives journey is recorded in some archive of some sort. I recall a lecture by Caroline Christov Bakargiev, given in 2014, in which she too was investigating ideas of traces and archival existence. Anyway back to my point.

At an even smaller level than fingerprints, where a very small trace of moisture is left behind in our own unique signature, I drilled a little further into the moisture itself and considered the smallest signature that we leave behind, being DNA.

Our uniqueness is made from the building blocks of life, our cells. Inside our cells are a nucleus, and inside that, - chromosomes, which are made of particular strings of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) molecules.  The combinations of these strings of DNA are unique to each individual, even though at a genetic level, we are 99.9% alike, sharing the same chromosomes!
Within the remaining 0.1%, our genes are different from one another, and so make us individually unique  (The number of combinations of DNA (where each length of DNA having some 3.2 billion 'letters' of coding, based on 4 different components called neucleotides, identified to geneticists as G,T,C and A), which permutates to at least to 1 in every '10 to the power of 3,480,000,000').  That makes each of us extremely unique!
 (Ref; "A Short History of Everything", Bill Bryson, (2003), Random House, London - Page 353 to 360)

If I tried to conceptualise anything smaller than this molecule of strings of DNA, which combine to make up our chromosomes, then the uniqueness of something belonging to an owner, yet left behind, starts to "disintegrate" through abstraction.

So at the moment, at the micro level, DNA is my smallest object of interest.

At the micro level, when I think of something left behind, my mind has been drawn to things like culture and ancestry. Ancestry in this discussion, could be argued to mean how we have evolved through the last millennia and indeed, much further back in time to where we, as a hominid species began to emerge. In contemporary genetic biology, for at least the past 25 years there has been great interest in how we can use human DNA to trace our lineage and evolution, as well as identifying genetic diseases, medical conditions and even traits of personality.  The mapping of the unique human DNA structure has been underway since around 1990, having been initially proposed as early as 1984.

As extracted from Bill Bryson's "Short History of Nearly Everything" (2004)

"Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid containing the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments carrying this genetic information are called genes. Likewise, other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information. Along with RNA (Ribonucleic acid) and proteins, DNA is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life. DNA consists of two long polymers of simple units called nucleotides, with backbones made of sugars and phosphate groups joined by ester bonds. These two strands run in opposite directions to each other and are, therefore, anti-parallel. Attached to each sugar is one of four types of molecules called nucleobases (informally, bases).
It is the sequence of these four nucleobases along the backbone that encodes information. This information is read using the genetic code, which specifies the sequence of the amino acids within proteins. The code is read by copying stretches of DNA into the related nucleic acid RNA in a process called transcription. Within cells DNA is organized into long structures called chromosomes. During cell division these chromosomes are duplicated in the process of DNA replication, providing each cell its own complete set of chromosomes.  Within the chromosomes, chromatin proteins such as histones compact and organize DNA. These compact structures guide the interactions between DNA and other proteins, helping control which parts of the DNA are transcribed."

This project has now emerged into a global development sponsored by some of the largest companies on the planet (e.g. IBM, , which is intended to track and record the DNA collected from a very large sample of people scattered throughout the world, in order to map where we settled geographically during the human exodus which was believed to be from central Africa. I am delighted to report that the project was completed a few years ago, although the exploration still continues.

You might already have guessed where I am going with this?

The name of this global project, which traces the microscopic record and archives of DNA at a massive level is,

[Wait for it…]

The Genome project, pronounced G-nome.

So my research object which I have been working with in the form of garden gnomes, now makes absolute sense to me!

R&D - Leaving things behind, what triggers our ability to connect with something?

I made a review of the artist Peter Doig some time ago, and whilst I was looking for a little inspiration today I came across a short article in the book by Will Gompertz entitled "think like an artist" (2015). On pages 145 to page 149, Gompertz explains how Doig's background and early childhood was quite disrupted through various stays in different countries and even different continents. In his early career Doig struggled to find his own signature of painting, even though he had been given much tuition both in Canada and in London. It was only after his second return to London for further tuition that he realised that his interest in his particular and in some ways peculiar landscape paintings could be further explored in a much more unique and personal way, which related to his Canadian memories of vast panoramas.

In the words of Will Gompertz,

"Doig realised what he had been holding him back, it wasn't moving to a new environment that inspired him but it was actually moving from an old one". 

This was underlined further by direct quote from Peter Doig which was

 "I have to leave somewhere before I can paint it"

This seemed to particularly resonate with me, not only for my own childhood where I too was rather disrupted in my early upbringing and education, having started out life in a very far away place, some 6 to 7000 miles away in Peru, (South America). With an early lifestyle during the 1960s that I could only describe as being almost idyllic for a child, open freedom and a very privileged safety to roam in a remote but industrious textile town / (actually the size of a small village) where everyone knew , who I was, knew our family, (my dad was the factory boss), and it seemed, everyone liked him for bringing wealth and prosperity for them, to quite a deserted place.  My return to the UK at the age of six, did not set me up very well for my later adolescence. It is only now, some 45+ years later, that I realise that this early disruption and uncertainty has probably had a lasting effect in some ways on my own personality. I have felt that I've been a bit of a nomad ever since.  Perhaps I am still searching for something that is lost. Interestingly, it's only recently, in the last couple of years or so, that I now know that I will never find it.

Whatever "it" is, could very well be a sublimated driver for me to express this loss through my art?  With this in mind, my research into "Things left Behind", seems even more pertinent...

(Reference; "Think Like an Artist", Will Gompertz, 2015. Penguin Paperback Books, London.)

Theory, - Feedback on proposal for my dissertation.

There was a little feeling of disappointment when I had my tutorial today, - regarding my proposal for my dissertation, simply because my tutor, perhaps, was a little too honest with me, in that he admitted that he had "no worries" with regards to whatever I submit, and so he hadn't prioritised much time to read my proposal in detail.  - Whilst I should take this as a positive stroke, I was a little deflated for purely selfish reasons...

What I did get though, was some positive feedback, together with suggestions to try and narrow down my scope of research, for example, perhaps to consider changing the title of my dissertation from looking generally at German contemporary artists, changed to just looking at the works of Anselm Kiefer.

With regards to philosophical research my tutor recommended in addition to the existing philosophers of Brian Massumi and Michael Taussig, it might also be worth looking at the works of Clive Bell who has done extensive studies on the subject of aesthetic emotion, and his descriptive accounts of the tension between emotion and affect.

With regards to another good German artist to compare Anselm Kiefer, and the notions of affect theory presented through contemporary paintings, see the works of Gerhard Richter and his own unique type of paintings.

In conclusion, my dissertation would best be centred around a chosen work of art by Anselm Kiefer, and for the narrative within the dissertation to discuss the "test" of it with Affect theory. This would best be conducted by finding a particular feature of a specific painting, and then to test it first within the essay, by finding the peculiarity of the specific image in order to explore it in depth. This seems to be a logical and rational approach that I will pursue.

Research & Development - Luc Tuymans review...

The benifits of good research became apparent again today when a chance encounter caused me to look at some of the works of Luc Tuymans....

Whilst his portraits and figurative paintings have a haunting veil about them, they also explore the every day object too.  Here, one of Tuymans earlier works, 'Pink Sunglasses' 2002, caught my eye... (No pun intended)...

Pink Glasses, by Luc Tuymans
(2001) painting - oil on canvas
Dimensions
37 3/8 in. x 23 1/4 in. (95 cm x 59 cm)

Collection SFMOMA
Purchase through a gift of The Buddy Taub Foundation, Jill and Dennis Roach, Directors
© Luc Tuymans Permanent URL
http://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/2002.48
PLEASE DO NOT COPY!.  Image recorded for personal research use only.

And this painting, created in 2001 has a particular resonance with the idea of the everyday, something fading away....  The painting is particularly enigmatic, - why has the identity of the passenger been erased? Is there a memory of someone who has died during an air flight? -

I notice that the passenger is seated in what appears to be the fuselage of an aircraft, the memory of the 9/11 tragedy is likely to be the stimulus for this work perhaps?

Luc Tuymans (Belgian, born 1958)
"Passenger" (2001) , oil on canvas  Size:90.2 x 60 cm. (35.5 x 23.6 in.)
Courtesy of Artnet.com
PLEASE DO NOT COPY!.  Image recorded for personal research use only.

My hunch was right.  - However, it seems that Tuymans turned his back somewhat on the tragic events and instead showed a still life example at the exhibition at Documenta, 2002, where it was expected that he was to present art in response to the 9/11 horror.  Instead, he chose a subject to instil "Sublimation" as he put it. (Ref. Tate Modern, see below).

Luc Tuymans
Still-Life 2002
Owned by James and Jacqui Erskine, Sydney, Australia
© The artist, courtesy Zeno X Gallery and David Zwirner, New York. Photo credit: Felix Tirry.
Courtesy of Tate Modern,
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/luc-tuymans/luc-tuymans-room-7
PLEASE DO NOT COPY!.  Image recorded for personal research use only.

Conclusions;
His reason for this was to make reference to "the banal" in order (in my opinion) to draw attention to the everyday, the quotidian.   By doing this, he's saying to the viewer,  that 9/11 could happen any day, at any time... we normalise ourselves through images of horror to such an extent that it becomes diluted.

In psychological terms, 'Sublimation' is the given title to how we (in maturity) use a 'defence strategy' or mechanism, to detach ourselves (from a highly charged, stimulative or horrific) event which would in an immature state cause us to follow our automatic instincts, and replace them with a controlled response.  In simple terms, it's the mature ability to 'respond' to an event, rather than 'react'.  The two are quite different.  A response requires reasoned and considered judgement, which in itself, requires an element of detachment from the trigger event; while a reaction is much more immediate, catalytic  or spontaneous and knee-jerked, such as a physical reaction perhaps, as triggered by an adrenalin rush, rather than a delayed adjustment.

Major Project - Searching for that which was lost....

Reading a passage from Rebecca Solnitt's book "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" (2005), I came across an explanation of the word "Shul"... - A Tibetan word that has multiple, but similar meanings.  In essence, it means impression, - that shape left behind when a foot walks across sand or mud; the shape left in a field of grass from a horses resting body, after it has risen and galloped away; but it also means other things too.
In Hebrew, Shul means temple, or tabernacle.  In thinking about this, there seems to be a link to those religious edifices, in that they hold impressions of those left before.  The spirit perhaps? The ghosts of older generations?  The heritage of the two millennia following the almost revolutionary reformation of religion is held within those walls.  The things left behind here, are in fact, all too present.

Conclusions...? - Well how on earth do I visualise this? - Do I need to? -  Or do I look towards an alternative aide memoire, using the other four sensory inputs of touch, smell, sound, or taste perhaps?  No, there are not the same sign posts for these senses, where a transaction takes place in one of these latter four, there is a trace of the SAME thing left behind, a remnant or fragment, fragrance of molecule, echo of the original.  How they are experienced however, is to remain the same.

In the visual interpretation, the original object left behind seems to be trapped in another manifestation, as this "shul" - so eloquently explained by the Tibetan meaning.

Major Project - Research

I came across some works by the New York sculptural artist, Sophie Kahn, this morning, which attracted my full attention.

Much of the technique of faded and cracked sculptures is not a million miles away from what I am imagining too.

Sophie Kahn - http://www.sophiekahn.net/#!portraits/c199t

(I am unable to copy the images of her sculpture here, due to copyright regulations, but feel free to use the link above to her web site to see examples of her works).

The images are very much based in the feminist / sexuality exploration genre, - I am not exploring this, but the technique she is using is of interest to me.


I also took a peek at Vija Celmins (pronounced Veeha Kelmuns), - born 1938, American Latvian artist.
 - Her drawings of everyday objects, particularly her photorealistic graphite drawings of spider's webs, seascapes, and "eraser" - 1967... have a beautifully etherial feeling to them.  The temporality of the subjects she chooses are all very different, but each one has a time related aspect to them that can conjure up the imagination of "things left behind"....

Vija Celmins  "Eraser" 1967
Acrylic on balsa wood
6 5/8 x 20 x 3 1/8 in.
Collection Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA
Gift of Avco Financial Services, Newport Beach

Theory, Notes on Essay Writing, #2

Following on from last weeks lecture, my conclusions from this lecture was to always use paintings as examples, but instead of using diagrams within text, it is advised that paintings pictures illustrations etc should all be placed at the end of the essay as A4 Size images.

Just for a recap, the title and the problem statement should contain [the concept or idea], "in", [a body of work], "and", [your own names' practice].

Shape of the Essay

Essays should have a separate title page, nothing fancy but just details of the writer the title of the document and the institution to which it belongs. Furthermore chapters should be referenced properly through the contents page. I should be aiming for approximately 1000 words per chapter but of course this could vary between save 500 to 2 or 3000 words per chapter maximum.

Introduction
As a rough template for the essay start off with an introduction of approximately 500 words which should outline your argument. This is not about your body of work, it is an argument which focuses on what and why. Within this introduction do not include brief histories or biographies here within it

Content - Chapters 1,2, etc, with individual chapter titles("Look for puzzles in what is going on externally in culture" and then relate that into your own work).

         Choices of quotes;

• A good quote expresses an idea or significant thought, by somebody who has a professional status.
• A bad quote offers opinion or anecdote and often given by non-qualified individual with little or no status in an academic sense.
• A good quote integrates meaning into the paragraph.
• A bad quote leads nowhere at all, or is placed at the end, which suggests to the reader that there is more information to come, but does not deliver anything.

          Illustrations.

• Coming back to the subject of illustrations within the text, by inserting these it can skew the text layout and the picture is likely to be small. 
• However if the pictures are placed at the end of the essay and the reader can refer back and forth to the diagrams and return to their point within the reading of the passage more easily.
• Place illustrations at the end of the essay, but reference them after the bibliography within an entirely separate list. 
• Include what type of illustration it is, and what medium it was originally created with, for example as it painting? Sculpture? Video? Etc.

Conclusion(s)
Equally a conclusion at the end of the essay should be approximately 500 words as well. This is the flip, or opposite of the introduction. Pick out the best bits of your essay and say why each of those are important. Do not end up on `from some of the person, and certainly do not bring in new information into the conclusion this is wrong. A conclusion is exactly that, it is a closing.

Referencing & Bibliographies
The bibliography should have between 20 to 30 items for a 6000 word essay. My research should actually include 40 to 60 references, but obviously some of this read information will be un-used.

• An index of illustrations should be separate from the bibliography
• 
  
• With regards to referencing and the bibliography (for quotes and ideas), you should put in here everything that you have demonstrably used. If you have made a quote but not contained it within "quotation marks" then this is plagiarism!  Your essay will be rejected!
• 
  
• Equally, do not put an item into the bibliography that isn't referenced within your essay. 
• 
  
• All the sources should be broadly academic and there should be approximately 25 of them, (not including the illustrations in the count).

References should have their titles enough alphabetic order, with the second line indented. The name of the book should be italicised.

Visit to New Contemporaries Exhibition, Nottingham

The New Contemporaries exhibition held in Nottingham this year (2015) was spread across three venues which were actually artists run galleries. The concept of an artists run a gallery is becoming more popular, where a community of say three or more artists get together and rent both studio and gallery space in vacant properties, quite often for what is known as a peppercorn rental, from authorities such as local councils and other property owners, in key parts of the city or town.

The "New Contemporaries" exhibition this year, on the face of it seemed quite small, however when I took into account that it had been spread across three locations, the total number of entries, if held within one gallery space, would actually be quite substantial.

The following works are attributable to and courtesy of the "Backlit Gallery"
Alfred House
Ashley Street
Nottingham NG3 1JG
http://backlit.org.uk/

I found these paintings / illustrations particularly interesting...
 They are both very illustrative, but also somewhat disturbing
in their content, having the smaller format also draws a viewer into them too.

Credit is given to the artists, -  Selected artists for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2015 are:

Sïan Astley, Kevin Boyd, Lydia Brockless, U. Kanad Chakrabarti, James William Collins, Andrei Costache, Julia Curtin, Abri de Swardt, Melanie Eckersley, Jamie Fitzpatrick, Justin Fitzpatrick, Hannah Ford, Sophie Giller, Richard Hards, Juntae T.J. Hwang, Jasmine Johnson, Tomomi Koseki, Hilde Krohn Huse, Pandora Lavender, Jin Han Lee, Hugo López Ayuso, Beatrice- Lily Lorigan, Scott Lyman, Hanqing Ma & Mona Yoo, Scott Mason, Oliver McConnie, Mandy Niewöhner, Hamish Pearch, Neal Rock, Conor Rogers, Katie Schwab, Tim Simmons, David Cyrus Smith, Francisco Sousa Lobo, Aaron Wells, Morgan Wills and Andrea Zucchini.

And further works.....

The idea of the wax William of Orange within the entrance of the exhibition was very curious, which engaged me immediately.  The chosen material, - wax, makes the sculpture very fragile.  This, I believe is  a reflection on the fragility of the political situation at the time when King William was thrown from his horse (here made of wood, - both Wood and Wax were the materials of choice at that historic point in time), through his horse stumbling upon a mole hill.  King William later died of his injury, thus the course of time was changed by a mole hill. ("The wee gentleman in the velvet waistcoat" - as the mole has since been referred as)....

Other works in the Backlit Gallery are are also depicted above.  Overall, out of the three sites visited today, I found this one the best laid out and curated.

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Moving on to the next gallery at "One Thoresby Street"
1 Thoresby Street
Nottingham
NG1 1AJ
http://onethoresbystreet.org/

Artworks on display here were much more contemporary, focussing particularly on Materiality.  I felt though, that some lacked imagination to some extent, as without any explanation of titles, some of the works seemed to lack the polish of the previous collection.

However, this painting by was refreshing...

And then finally to the "Primary Gallery" 

33 Seely Road
Nottingham
NG7 1NU
http://www.weareprimary.org/

The most recognisable works below, painted upon a cigarette box, a beer mat and a condom packet, were of views that might have been made from the location of the object substrates themselves, e.g. on a pavement, (view through a gate bottom); a view of a road gutter; and a public house beer garden, were, in my opinion, very well chosen.

 nothing much new here, - I was reminded of the pots created as a massive series by contemporary artist Edmund De-Wall, and thought that there was little originality to these artifacts, other than the beautiful colour.  I will say however, that the kidney shaped vessel on the bottom right had more appeal than the other objects and their overall layout provided the curiosity factor too.

These works, created from what appear  to be old umbrellas, had much more originality about them.  I was quite intrigued by both how the artist made them and assembled the materials so tightly.  Overall these objects had much more success in engaging me as a spectator.